I haven't read any of his books, but his interviews are always great, so Black Prophetic Fire looks like a good place to start.

Some interviews with him that I've enjoyed: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/cornel-west-sees-a-spiritual-decay-in-the-culture

https://bostonreview.net/articles/cornel-west-mordecai-lyon-missing-zinn/

In the NYer interview, he discusses how he prefers to develop his ideas in conversation, so, yeah, a book structured around interviews looks like an ideal introduction.

bell, you know, she was a real intellectual giant, spiritual genius, free as Nina Simone and Muhammad Ali, just free in her soul and spirit. I loved that about “Breaking Bread,” both editions, 1991 and 2017, books that I have tremendous connection to because we loved working together. We loved fighting with each other, contesting each other, disagreeing with each other and so forth. But I try to be like that across the board. My dear brother Robert George, the conservative brother, my Catholic brother, who I also have a deep love and respect for, we do the same thing. I was blessed to do the same thing with so many other figures in my life, Roberto Unger at the law school or Sylvia Ann Hewlett and our book, “The War Against Parents.”

I’ve been blessed to be able to do the same thing with Davíd Carrasco, my brown brother at Harvard. I’ve been blessed to have these kind of Socratic relations and dialogical engagements with a variety of folk, where there’s overlap and when there’s deep disagreement. That’s just the way a jazzman proceeds in the life of the mind, you know what I mean?